morninbob wrote: ↑Fri Jul 12, 2024 7:54 pm
The German purity law isn't a marketing tool, only 4 ingredients are allowed, water, barley, malt and hops.
Glucose is added to UK brewed lager to make it taste nice, that's what gives you a headache.
The purity laws
act as marketing because they're famous and give people the mistaken belief that German beer is higher quality.
I seriously doubt German beer is produced under any different rules than any other EU country and we'll be operating under the same rules. Maybe they have additional laws but this would just mean they couldn't produce craft beer (or at least not label it as "beer")?
The original purity law is so old it only names THREE ingredients because they didn't even know what yeast is.
You claim people are putting glucose into beer?
I know this is done to create a secondary fermentation but that's a stylistic choice. Nobody, to my knowledge, is putting glucose into beer "because it's cheap". Besides which, you wouldn't need to as there is tonnes of sugars in malt.
If you want to make cheap beer, you typically use malt extract rather than pure malt because it's cheaper. However you can still do this and remain inside those esteemed purity laws because malt extract only contains malt. Take that, Kaiser Bill!
Ive never known glucose included as a base ingredient to reduce costs. I don't know of any beer popular commercial beers that have glucose as an ingredient. I also don't know what you would want to, unless you were making one of those daft ultra-strong beers. Glucose will not give you a headache but alcohol will, and I suppose if you add glucose, you'll end up with stronger beer but again, that's a stylistic choice. It's alcohol giving you that headache, not glucose.
We're getting into the intricacies of brewing here. I'm happy to talk beer and brewing till the cows come home but there are a few urban myths I think need their balloons bursting:
Commercial UK beer is as good as any other commercial beer produced anywhere in the world.
No, UK commercial beer is not adulterated.
There is no secret ingredient in commercial beer that sends you loopy. The ingredient that sends you loopy is alcohol.
There is no secret ingredient in UK beer that gives you a headache. The ingredient that gives you a headache is alcohol.
You prefer Czech beer / German beer / beer from xxx-land? Well that's fine but it's more likely just your personal preference.
5.4% and goes down like pop